How Vladimir Putin turned himself into a villain overnight

Over tumultuous two years, starting from 2020, one phrase has become all so common: “it can’t get worse, can it?”. The global pandemic damaged and traumatized the world both economically and mentally. From day to day, it seemed that we were getting news updates that seemed direr from week to week. The rising death tolls, the uncertainty on the topic of the vaccines, constant threat of misinformation, new Covid strains, that kept popping up, each deadlier than the previous and restrictions that seemed to be getting stricter as time went on. Even though, it seemed that people around the world got more separated during pandemic, there was a silver lining that a common problem that seemed to affect everyone equally, unified everyone in a way. As a third year of the pandemic started it seemed that things started to slow down, people were getting vaccinated and the death tolls lowered, in a first time since forever it looked like that the world can return back to normalcy. However, as things started to get just a little more hopeful a new worldwide crisis emerged out of sudden. On 24th of February, Russia invaded Ukraine and started an open war on the territory of Europe. From this point on, two long Covid-themed years seem like a distant memory and the world isn’t viewed in the pre and post Covid realms but instead in pre and post 24th of February lens. In this new decade, it already sounds like a cliché but the world will never be the same, at least on the geopolitical arena. Previously the face of the threat to humanity was a vague virus with origin unclear to most of the population, but now the threat has changed to a much more concrete and human face, the face of Russian Federations president and commander in chief Vladimir Putin.

Since the start of Russian invasion on the night from February 23 to 24, witnessing the escalation of the events was quite an experience. Especially from a Georgian's perspective who remembers vividly Russian invasion on my country's territory in August of 2008. At first, it’s almost like a sense of déjà vu but something feels different. Russia’s aggression towards its neighbour is not surprising, that was kind of a trend in history and Georgia can testify. But Georgia is a small country on a territory that is barely considered European and on a giant globe seems insignificant. Even though the western world for a long time stood against Russia’s imperialist tendencies, the armed conflict with a tiny neighbouring country isn’t a reason to sound all alarms. With some minimum sanctions and diplomacy, the West managed to stop the continuation of the invasion and it was over in a week however the territory of South Ossetia became even more occupied, just like the territory of Abkhazia that was lost in the 90’s. For the global powers this problem was over and life moved on. Russia repeated the same tactic of interfering in other countries' affairs several time after this, the biggest one was on the territory of Ukraine in 2014, when Putin annexed the region of Crimea. The Western powers always acted the same way, condemned the aggression of Russia but never took measures beyond the creation of economic sanctions. This is of course understandable, even though development-wise Russia is behind the world’s leading nations, it’s still a nuclear superpower and with its arsenal has a potential to start a nuclear war. Through both is internal and foreign policies, over the decades Putin created a worldwide image of a strict, authoritarian leader but the politics are rarely divided into good and evil, during 20th century USA as well as other leading western powers have interfered with force in other countries affairs but still maintained an image of civil, democratic nations. Up until now Putin’s actions were tolerated by the Western world because he didn’t escalate them into situations that might turn into problems with worldwide influence later on. For a long time, Russia, military wise was perceived as an equal to superpowers like USA or China. However, lots of status quos were broken after the invasion of Ukraine began.

Many were shocked after waking up in a post-invasion world and reading the news. It's not like military action was completely unexpected, since there were escalating tension on the Russian-Ukrainian border ever since the 2014 annexation. But the fact that Putin started an actual war, without any escalation on Ukraine’s part, was unexpected just because how devoid of logic this action is. To put it into perspective, Ukraine isn’t a tiny spot on the world map, it’s a vastly developing nation, that is the second biggest in Europe territory-wise and has a population of almost 45 million people. No matter what Putin calls this a denazification or a special military operation, his actions have caused the biggest military mobilization on European territory since World War 2 and that is an actual problem to Western powers and to world peace in general. Putin is waging open war not in faraway lands but right next to the borders of NATO and European Union and no matter what Russian propaganda concocts, they are not conducting an operation but using full military might to take over the country with blunt force. This something straight out of world’s most infamous dictator’s playbook and can be comparable to the actual start of WW2, when Hitler suddenly invaded Poland after years of smaller acts of aggression on other countries’ territories. Putin changed his country's fate overnight, in just 24 hours Russia turned from a big state with somewhat questionable, authoritarian leader, to a country that is led by a madman that is threatening the start of the next world war. Because of the direness of the situation this time actions followed, everyone turned from Russia, in this conflict Putin basically has no tangible allies as no one who participates in the world economy wants to be associated with a man that now has a potential to leave behind a legacy similar to Adolf Hitler. Before it was a normal sight to see Putin negotiating with the German chancellor Angela Merkel, standing next to other European leaders and shaking hands with American President but now no one can stand next to Putin no matter the regime, even the authoritarian Chinese President Xi Jing Ping isn’t too eager to support its neighbour if he wants to continue profiting further from the Western economy.

It’s currently unclear exactly how Putin has visualized the success of his campaign in Ukraine. The motivation of why he wants to conquer it is actually clear. Putin is a man stuck firmly in the past, nostalgic of the “glory days” of the Soviet Union and sees all of its previous member countries as Russia’s lost property, especially Ukraine that was there since inception of Russia as a nation. But why invade now and what goals must be met for invasion’s success remains a mystery. There was an aura of uncertainty in the first week of the invasion, there were grim predictions that Ukraine’s President Zelensky would be forced to flee the country and Russian troops will occupy the capital of Kyiv in a matter of days. But as Zelensky remained with his people and after a week of intense fighting not only Ukraine’s capital remained under control of its people but no major city fell under Russia's might, certain parts of uncertainty began to fade and parts of Putin’s bluff began to be exposed. Firstly, gone was the myth of Russia’s military might. Now begins the third month of the invasion that at first was thought to be over before it even began, but Russia’s troops are disoriented and weren’t able to take over a single major city. Moreover, we always hear and see the incidents where Russia's outdated military tech is either destroyed or hijacked not only by Ukrainian soldiers but also by armed or unarmed ordinary citizens. The biggest event of the conflict was the moment where the fleet less Ukrainian militaries efforts managed to sink Russian navy’s flagman “Moskva”. The perception of almighty Vladimir Putin as a military equal to world’s other superpowers began to fade and a new picture came into focus, one of a wannabe conqueror with the delusions of grandeur rooted in the extremely romanticized version of his country's past. Secondly, it seems that Putin greatly underestimated the way wars are perceived in the civilized word. The Russian propaganda machine might be effective on the population within his own borders or at least makes the majority of it conformist enough, but the rest of the world now is able to see the invasion as it unfolds live. This is not like WW2 or conflicts from the cold war, where people got the news from newspapers, short TV clips obtained by wartime journalists or from documentaries years post factum. Now basically everyone has a cell phone with a camera and they can be themselves a documentarian journalists just by clicking the button and recording the event live. Because of that, we are able to see the invasion from multiple angles from point of view of normal Ukrainian citizens. Russian diplomats aren’t fooling anybody where the world can see how the Russian military has been senselessly turning previously thriving cities into nothing but rubble and killing the innocent civilian population in the process. According to United Nations, at this point Putin’s “special operation” have cost lives of over three thousand innocent people. The blood of those people is on Putin’s hands and bloodshed of this numbers can’t be easily forgiven; the USA has retaliated against the fundamentalist Muslims for less. The most gruesome display of Russia’s military brutality were the pictures taken in the small town of Bucha. The atrocities that were documented there can be comparable to the ones done by the third Reich and were instantly correctly labelled as war crimes. And thirdly, Putin seems to slowly realize that he is stuck in an unwinnable situation and at this point has no choice but to frame himself as a stereotypical villain to the rest of the world. Even though his war wastefully, daily takes lives of both the Ukrainians and Russians, the sanctions and following economic collapse make lives of his own citizens harder by the day, he just can't be a bigger man and quit this massacre even for the sake of his own people. In his perception this would be a sign of weakness and an open admittance of defeat and that is an unacceptable blow to the reputation that he has constructed over the decades, even though his reputation is already ruined beyond repair but at least he can still be an unbending, stoic leader. He also probably realizes that he won’t be as easily forgiven as before and the only path is to continue forward, but this path leads nowhere, there is no tangible military victory against Ukraine on the horizon so the only choice is to senselessly bomb non-military targets, instead of taking over just reducing entire cities to rubble and hoping that eventually under immense pressure Ukraine will crack and submit. The whole world just sees an isolated tyrant that is having a tantrum because he can’t have his way so he attempts to destroy everything so no one has their way either. This is a far cry from Putin that was existing in perception of many people outside of Russians. Gone is a traditionally masculine, calculating stoic leader that values traditions, isn’t intimidated by other countries and thinks of his people as a priority. Now all is seen is a lost man whose every next action seems more irrational than the previous one. Because of this unwinnable position he was forced to double down on militaristic image. The propaganda machine in Russian had to be cranked up to maximum like in some antagonistic dictatorial regime from a dystopian fictional novel, the previously unofficial symbol of the invasion, lattin letter Z that was just painted on part of military vehicles to show their designation, became the official symbol of support towards Putin and was used on several events such as government organized concert. To the outside viewer this Z symbol seems darkly comical, since it brings up association of a logo of some cartoonish villainous organization from the realm of fictional comic books at best and the Nordic runes adopted by the German SS (Schutzstaffel) at worst. Paired with the documented brutality and atrocities against civilian population and it almost paints a clear black and white scenario out of a classic Hollywood movie. In a matter of a week Putin changed the worlds perception of Russia, suddenly it became an inhumane dark force that threatens all good in this world and the world accordingly stands against it. And if weeks followed this perception actively worsened as Putin continued his senseless campaign. We’ve seen the viral photos of murals where President Zelensky is depicted as heroic Harry Potter against Putin depicted as his sadistic nemesis Voldemort. On the internet Russian soldiers have been colloquially referred to as Orcs, inhuman soldiers of Dark Lord Sauron’s army in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy book trilogy, and Ukraine’s soldiers and population has been depicted as a heroic underdog rebel alliance that opposes oppressive fascistic galactic empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies saga. Putin’s image at this stage is tarnished to the point that it looks like Belarusian president Lukashenko, who seemed in the beginning to be Russians’ only ally, wants to distance himself from the “military operation” and stopped providing aid. As time passes and the “operation” is still ongoing, more and more Putin isolates Russia from the rest of the world, a rift that gets harder to fix in the future.

No matter what happens in this conflict, one thing seems obvious, Ukraine has won the information war and ironically Putin’s irrational decision-making helped them immensely. The world is following Ukraine’s narrative of events, while representatives of other countries leave the room when Russian diplomats open their mouths. Putin’s brash actions seemed to make the impossible and managed to unify countries of Europe and not only Europe, against a common existential threat. After events such as Brexit and the rise of radical ideologies on the continent the people looked like divided but now everyone wants to be together and defeat the evil that seems to threaten their way of life. And once again just like a fantasy novel villain Putin seems to be living in a self-fulfilling prophecy where events that he claims he wanted to prevent with the invasion in Ukraine are now happening because of it. Like the strengthening and stronger militarization of NATO forces, the willingness of previously neutral countries to either break their historic neutrality for the cause, as Switzerland, or join the ranks of NATO for future security, as Sweden and Finland that border Russia. With all the NATO’s military aid to Ukraine, their previously relatively timid armed forces are stronger than ever and are able to stand their ground against the aggressors. Putin’s defeatist narrative that the whole world is against Russia is also now true but not because of the reasons he thinks that. Putin has dramatically worsened his own country's condition on the world stage and it won’t be an easy fix for probably generations into the future.

I don’t know how this conflict will ultimately turn out but one thing seems right. The word’s nations immediate willingness to stand against the oppressor seems hopeful for the future. As a Georgian it’s gratifying to see a fellow former USSR country getting the support Georgia needed in 2008 and successfully retaliating against the occupant. It seems that the majority’s perception of Putin changed towards what he truly is, a caricature of a villain and a wannabe despot, hopefully this trend continues to grow further, maybe inside the consciousness of Russian population also, and this will lead to his ultimate downfall.

Irakli Gobronidze, TSU Master's Degree Student